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Date: Sun, 11 May 2003 08:28:41 -0400
From: "John M. McMahon" <mcmahon@mail.lemoyne.edu>
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>From the *Albany (NY) Times Union* 5/11/03:

"College students need education" 
By STANLEY N. KATZ (Director of the Princeton University
Center for Arts and Cultural Policy Studies.) 

Some tasty excerpts:

"Universities are doing well at giving students practical,
often pre-professional, knowledge, but poorly at enhancing
their capacity to think out of the box, to be generally
educated across the various academic disciplines, to make
value judgments and to be informed citizens. Wouldn't it be
good, for instance, if in addition to being able to find
Iraq on a map and understand the role of the Mideast in
international politics, your college-aged child knew how to
formulate moral and political responses to the current
crisis, informed by a knowledge of history and of great
works of art, literature and ideas?"

[snip] 

"General or liberal education is a casualty of this trend
toward educational utilitarianism. By liberal education, I
mean broad exposure to the major domains of knowledge, and
systematic training in logical thinking and in the principal
forms of communication and expression. To make intelligent
decisions on public matters that a democracy demands, a
college student really needs to know the larger contours of
history, the major currents of literature and philosophy and
at least one foreign language. One-dimensional training does
not equip students for a three-dimensional world."

Full text:

http://timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=133090&category=OPINION&newsdate=5/11/2003

John McMahon
LMC
.